Structural issues aside, the story’s characters, human or otherwise, gleefully soak up the spotlight.
An Alabama cop, living with ghosts and a family of mediums, may have found a link between jewelry stolen from her home and a recent murder case in this supernatural debut.
Alma Sue Babineaux’s family home, BonHaven, is already a full house with Al’s momma, granddaddy, aunts, and little sister, Lyci. But otherworldly guests fill it to capacity, from Wallace and John (poltergeist-esque Uglies) to Thruman, a Trow (essentially a short troll). Keeping the ghostly residents in line isn’t easy; Thruman, for one, gets a kick out of throwing clumps of dirt at Al. But things only get worse when her younger brother Jimmy-Don, an aspiring TV star, shows up at BonHaven with his ghostbusting crew. Jimmy-Don’s fascinated by Bastian, an ancient Spanish oak tree near the property line and an apparent lure for inexplicable occurrences. Bastian’s also the place where someone’s left a body and strange carvings, possibly voodoo symbols, on the tree. Back at BonHaven, a fortune in antique jewelry mysteriously vanishes. Not only does Al suspect that somebody’s creeped into the home and snatched the jewels, she soon sees a connection between the theft and the Bastian murder case. Al, partner Bobby Glen Taylor, and handsome, viable romantic interest Carlyle Baveras struggle to put the pieces together to find a thief—and/or a killer. The largely tongue-in-cheek tale, unquestionably a series opener, wisely concentrates on its delightfully bizarre characters. Aunt Merle, for example, “accidentally time travels in her sleep,” while Momma’s dog, Cooper, loves to sprint through a room chasing Thruman, an incident that occurs so often that no one even acknowledges it. But the narrative’s shifting perspective is somewhat bewildering. It starts with Al logging the typically peculiar events into a diary at BonHaven but later bounces from first- to third-person and back, with readers often privy to information Al doesn’t have—like Carlyle’s scintillating secret. Occasional mistakes add to the confusion: inconsistent spellings of certain names (Bastian, in several instances, is “Bastion”), the titles officer and detective used synonymously, and Al’s dad described separately as both missing and dead. Nevertheless, Al is a smashing protagonist, and one can only hope she’ll display her oft-mentioned wrestling skills in a sequel.
Structural issues aside, the story’s characters, human or otherwise, gleefully soak up the spotlight.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9964819-0-8
Page Count: 318
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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